Pavel Chekov Lefty yells as some unseen old people in today’s strip… and thus continues August, as FW’s semi-official ollllllllllllllllllllld folks month.

August was once a time when this strip would fix its gaze on the high school and its students and teachers preparing for the new school year. Well, its gaze remains fixed upon the high school this August, but TB has imported infirm, elderly seniors in lieu of high school seniors. It would be bizarre if it wasn’t so uninteresting.

21 responses to “O2 be anywhere else…”

You really have to wonder if all of the silverhairs (are there any others?) showing up for a Batiuk talk will find this amusing. He had a pix on his blog a few months ago where the average age of those attending was 70.

Putting elderly folks on oxygen through a marching band routine outdoors in the August heat…

It is sick, but in a kind of uncanny valley of sickness. It is not so exaggeratedly sick that it comes around to being ridiculous and, potentially, funny. It is just cruel and stupid, like so much of this strip.

Yeah, it isn’t the joke itself that makes it so warped, it’s the way he thinks this sort of humor is so funny that makes it so objectionable. Elderly people using oxygen tanks isn’t an inherently funny idea and for the life of me I don’t understand why he does. It COULD be a decent premise that he COULD mine for easy gags but, as always, he’s just taking the cheap and lazy way out, preferring to resort to the same old tropes instead of developing a conflict or fleshing out a character that might produce an “organic” comedic scenario.

Not to mention the undeniable fact that Becky is never, ever funny, even when she’s trying to be. ESPECIALLY when she’s trying. I’ve long maintained that she’s one of the least necessary FW characters who adds nothing and exists solely as a reminder of a long ago and long forgotten prestige arc of yore. Find me a single Becky fan anywhere in the country and I’ll show you a big fat liar.

To refer to King of the Hill again, they had an episode involving old people, one of whom had an oxygen tank. It was fun, and the tank ended up being important to the plot. Whereas Batiuk seems to think “haha, these people are old and have to use an oxygen tank” is somehow innately funny.

Oh, I don’t think BatHack believes old folks with oxygen tanks are inherently funny. I just think he set up a particularly inept “pun” in the second and third panels–when Lefty bellows about the need to “keep those lines as straight as we can,” she’s not talking about the lines of musicians on the field; she’s talking about their oxygen tank lines. Ha, ha! Double meaning! Isn’t that funny?! Time for milk and cookies–hey, Mom!!

And, of course, those of us who didn’t get the pun are a bunch of mouth-breathing deplorables (or whatever he’s calling us of late) who aren’t worthy of the Lord of Linguistics’s sublime humour (as in “bilious humour”–see, that was a pun, too!)

This unfunny on several levels, How old and infirm are the band alumni? Didn’t any recent and presumably healthy graduates show up? it also is improbable. Marching bands are primarily comprised of wind instruments. Are people reliant on portable oxygen really going to be able to march and play?

Don’t we usually have monsoon rains during the performances proper? Isn’t that going to mean that we have funny stuff about not having to do this again next year because most of the alumni were being shipped home in caskets and urns?

Isn’t the beginning of the school year a very important time for the regular High School Band to get together and start practicing? Why is Becky wasting her time with this shit? Wouldn’t Dinkle (who, despite having retired due to hearing loss years ago, continues to do things that require an acute sense of hearing into today) be more appropriate as the leader of the alumni band? And didn’t he play out all his “hilarious old coots playing instruments while courting death” jokes with the Bedside Manorisms?

I was in marching band in high school and do not have fond memories of getting yelled at by the director during practice. As a grown adult one of the last things I would put up with is getting yelled at again for not keeping lines straight.

Last two months or so of my dad’s life he needed supplemental oxygen from time to time to help keep him alive.
A laugh riot it was not. He was a proud man and this sudden dependence on a tank to breathe with was not easy to deal with – he kept his sense of humor though and during his last hospital stay before dying was able to amuse the nurses (who all loved him). As noted needing oxygen is not in as of itself funny.
So seriously go and intercourse yourself Batiuk